Reuben Crosland says the Baltimore Red Line will displace residents. (Photo by Amy Shelton)
Neighborhood Voices on the Red Line Route:
REUBEN CROSLAND
When pressed, Reuben Crosland acknowledges that the proposed east-west light rail line may be good for the city (“it will mean jobs”) and that it may even be good for transit.
But what the 72-year-old barber really wants to get across about the so-called Red Line is: almost none of that bounty will be shared by him and his primarily African-American neighbors.
The Red Line, he says is for the suburbanites moving in to be closer to downtown Baltimore in order to avoid long commutes and paying for lots of pricey gas.
“It won’t help the seniors. Taxes will go up. They won’t be able to afford to live here,” said Crosland, who was taking a break outside his Edmondson Village Shopping Center barbershop.
Who will? He gestured toward nearby Uplands, the $200 million, thousand-plus-unit, mixed-use development now being built — with lots of city financing, political support and federal help — on the site of former public housing.
“The renaissance is coming . . . suburbanites want to come here, that’s what (the Red Line) is all about,” he said. “This (area) is more centralized. Suburbia’s done. It’s going to be for the poor. We’ll be living out there!”
Traffic streaming west on Baltimore's Edmondson Avenue at rush hour. Brew photo by Fern Shen.
Crosland, like many others in this part of the city, says the Red Line is just one more big public project aimed at displacing poor residents, like the “Highway to Nowhere.” That infamous east-west interstate project brought about the destruction of vast swaths of poor black west Baltimore in the 1970s, before it was abandoned.
“They took their homes and then they didn’t even build the highway and we ended up with nothing,” said Crosland, who has lived in Baltimore for 40 years and worked in various sales jobs before becoming a barber. What he’s seen, he said, leaves him very skeptical:
“They’re going to do what they’re going to do. Does it matter what we say?”
-by FERN SHEN
Fern Shen is the editor and publisher of Baltimore Brew
BREWED RECENTLY ON THE RED LINE . . . .
today:
“Surface Red Line would squeeze out cars – and that’s good!”
previously:
“Transit Line Could Uplift a Struggling Baltimore Community”
“Transit Line a Burden, not a boon, for thriving, car-centric Canton”
“Time for Some Myth-busting on Baltimore’s Red Line, Says a Believer”
“Baltimore’s Red Line? Better for Developers Than Transit Riders.”
